October 10, 2019 — This spring’s record-shattering flooding from the Mississippi River has wreaked historic havoc on oyster production in the Gulf of Mexico, which could reverberate for years to come with scant supply and hard-to-digest prices.
Louisiana, which bore the worst of the damage from too-low salinity and smothering algae blooms and historically accounts for 75 percent of Gulf harvests and 34 percent of U.S. harvests, is all but out of commission for this fall’s oyster harvest season.
September 4, 2019 — The salinity levels of water dictate what lives in and around it, and what doesn’t.
If there’s a lot of rain or a sudden surge of fresh water into a bay, salinity levels drop. If there’s a drought a surge of seawater from a major storm, salinity levels tend to rise. Climate change is already altering those balances.
And the changes wrought by those disruptions can be profound.
Earlier this year, heavy rains in the Midwest swelled the Mississippi River. To prevent flooding in New Orleans, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carre Spillway, west of the city, twice this year. That sent a torrent of fresh water into the waters off Louisiana and Mississippi, west of Biloxi – and created a disaster along the oyster reefs in the area.
August 7, 2019 — One of the ways the state plans to rebuild land on the Louisiana coast is by sediment diversions — diverting the silt, sand, and dirty waters of the Mississippi River into the marsh.
For years, many in the commercial fishing industry have claimed that the influx of freshwater funneled through diversions would ruin their industry. Now, some fishers feel they have proof: the damaging impacts of the 2019 Mississippi River Flood.
On a bayou in the St. Bernard Parish town of Yscloskey, George Barisich starts up his shrimp boat.
“Hear that?” he says, as the diesel engine below our feet roars to a start. “That’s the sound we want to hear.”
Barisich says that engine hasn’t gotten much use lately. There is no point in heading into the marsh when there aren’t any shrimp to catch.
“I’m 82 percent off on my brown shrimp,” he says of this season. “Eighty two. And there’s a lot of people just as bad.”
June 26, 2019 — Louisiana and Mississippi government warnings not to eat fish from certain areas of the states are causing the seafood industry concern.
After an algae bloom developed when the Bonnet Carre Spillway was opened to alleviate flooding along the Mississippi River, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality issued beach closures in Hancock and Harrison counties along the Gulf of Mexico.
Subsequently, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources (MDMR) is advising the public to not eat fish or any other seafood taken from “affected waters or in proximity to the beach closures,” MDMR said in a statement. “The public’s safety is very important to our state and our agency will continue working closely with MDEQ to monitor our waters and our seafood.”
The Louisiana Department of Health is also warning the public about a potentially large algae bloom that is developing on Lake Pontchartrain, “while algae toxins have not been found in the edible parts of fish, LDH advises that fish not be harvested or eaten from the lake during the bloom,” the agency said in a statement.
In southern Mississippi, news reports on the beach closures and seafood caution are causing concerns among consumers and the seafood industry.
June 26, 2019 — In a letter written to United States Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross by Governor John Bel Edwards, the governor requested a federal fisheries disaster declaration for Louisiana from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“The extreme duration of high Mississippi River levels since December 2018 has necessitated unprecedented efforts by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to mitigate the threat of levee failures in Louisiana. Such efforts have included the opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway twice this year; first in late February and again in early May,” the letter – that was dated June 13, 2019 – reads. “That structure continues to pass large volumes of river water into Lake Pontchartrain which subsequently flows east into Lake Borgne and Mississippi Sound. The extreme influx of freshwater has greatly reduced salinity levels in our coastal waters and disrupted estuarine productivity.”
In the request, Edwards referenced information gathered by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), the organization that manages and protects Louisiana’s natural resources.
An above average oyster mortality rate in oyster reefs in St. Bernard Parish; a statewide 30 percent decline in shrimp landings (brown and white shrimp combined) for the month of March and 61 percent for the month of April, when compared to the five-year average; and a 40 percent statewide drop in landings of speckled trout, when compared to the five-year-average, were some of the LDWF findings Edwards referenced in the letter.
May 31, 2019 — Louisiana lieutenant governor and several Louisiana seafood industry groups are seeking to ensure that fishermen and harvesters affected by the Morganza Spillway’s opening can apply for federal aid to help them recover.
The Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to open the spillway June 6, sending massive amounts of water from the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya Basin. The action aims to relieve pressure on Mississippi River levees that protect cities along its route, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
But Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and seafood industry representatives said today that pushing an estimated 1.5 million cubic-feet-per-second of rushing freshwater into a fragile ecosystem of more than 100 species of fish and aquatic life threatens the species and the fishermen, harvesters and businesses that depend on them.
“The opening of the Morganza Spillway will cause severe damage to the Atchafalaya Basin, our nation’s largest estuary,” Nungesser wrote in a letter he sent today to Gov. John Bel Edwards and Louisiana’s congressional delegation.
“The opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway earlier this year already has negatively impacted seafood in Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne,” he said. “New fresh water flow into the basin will further impact the livelihoods of thousands of Gulf fisherman, as well as crawfish and oyster farmers. My office is also asking Congress to include assistance for the seafood industry in any future disaster recovery bills.”
Louisiana’s seafood industry is likely to be negatively impacted for months and potentially years, Nungesser said in a news release.
August 8, 2017 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed spending $275 million to upgrade defenses against an invading force. The enemy? A fish. Specifically, Asian carp that are threatening to break through to the Great Lakes.
In June, a live Asian silver carp was caught in the Illinois Waterway just 9 miles from Lake Michigan. Scientists fear that if the voracious carp establish themselves in the Great Lakes, they could devastate the region’s $7 billion fishing industry.
The Corps of Engineers wants to upgrade the Brandon Road Lock and Dam near Joliet, Ill., on the Des Plaines River. The waterway is a link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River, where Asian carp are already a big problem. The Associated Press writes, “The Brandon Road complex is considered a bottleneck where defenses could be strengthened against fish swimming upstream toward openings to the lake at Chicago.”
April 19, 2017 — Louisiana’s proposed 2017 master plan update for coastal restoration and hurricane protection should contain more marsh creation projects in the Barataria and Terrebonne basins. It needs more projects protecting coastal and lake shorelines on the western part of the state. And it needs more money for flood-proofing businesses, elevating houses and moving people out of frequently flooded locations.
Those are the major themes of more than 1,300 comments submitted by the public to the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which is scheduled to vote on the master plan Wednesday (April 19). The authority’s staff has incorporated some of the suggestions in updated versions of the master plan and the 2018 annual plan, which acts as the budget of the master plan. If both documents are approved, which is expected, they will be submitted to the Legislature for a vote in its current session ending June 8.
The written comments include several complex recommendations from public officials, business leaders, scientists, fishers and the general public, along with many simpler recommendations. Too, there are hundreds of form letters distributed by a coalition of interest groups such as Native American tribes, interfaith community organizations and Vietnamese Americans.
October 25th, 2016 — Delta systems such as coastal Louisiana are beautiful and unique intersections of communities, ecosystems and industry. But the wide variety of interests in these areas can also lead to discord as we plan for the future of our often-vulnerable coastal regions.
As complex restoration projects are implemented, how do we balance the needs of the ecosystem and communities? How do we reduce negative impacts to fisheries and industry, and make sure certain wildlife won’t benefit at the expense of others?
A diverse, interdisciplinary group of 12 scientists with decades of on-the-ground research in Louisiana recently tried to work past conflicting interests to tackle challenges left by decades of mismanagement of the region’s vital wetlands.
Their task: to figure out how so-called sediment diversions affect different aspects of the environment, and how to operate them to build land while providing the greatest good.
The report they released in July 2016 was significant because it was the first attempt to look holistically at how best to operate these engineered structures that release Mississippi River sediment and freshwater into the wetlands.
August 26, 2016 — George Ricks represents one of the great ironies in the debate over how to restore and protect parts of Louisiana’s rapidly-vanishing coast.
Like many of those who depend most on Louisiana’s estuaries, the charter boat captain is deeply skeptical of the state’s plans to build massive structures and deliver Mississippi River sediment into the marsh with the aim of building land.
“They’re going to turn both of the estuaries, Barataria and Breton, totally fresh from February to July,” said Ricks, “which is going to wipe out our spawning seasons.”
A group of scientists and community experts came together to examine not whether to building diversions, but how they would be operated.
“When people come to New Orleans, they want to eat oysters, they want to eat seafood. they want to eat shrimp,” said Dr. Earl Melancon, Ph.D., a Nicholls State University expert on shellfish.
Melancon was one of a dozen experts who, in essence, tackled the question of whether it is possible to partially free the Mississippi River from its straight jacket of levees without ruining an entire way of life.